Choose either one of these questions:


1. Marshall McLuhan had theories about media as the extensions of man. Kindly explain how does the theories being applied in this age and time using mass media.
 2. Explain and gives your personal interpretation on Marshall McLuhan’s ‘the tetrad’ diagram.

The question I choose would be number 2. A tetrad is four set of things or group of four. In Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad diagram, ‘Marshall McLuhan summarized his ideas about media in a concise tetrad of media effects. The tetrad is a means of examining the effects on society of any technology /medium (put another way: a means of explaining the social processes underlying the adoption of a technology/medium) by dividing its effects into four categories and displaying them simultaneously.’



Marshall McLuhan’s Tetrad diagram looks like a big cross contained of 5 diamond boxes that combined together. In the middle of the diamond box contain MEDIUM, then link to ENHANCES at the top left, REVERSES and the top right; RETRIEVES at the bottom left and OBSOLESCES at the bottom right.

The diagram look like this:


Explaination for the Tetrad diagram

McLuhan designed the tetrad as a pedagogical tool, phrasing his laws as questions with which to consider any medium:

-What does the medium enhance?
-What does the medium make obsolete?
-What does the medium retrieve that had been obsolesced earlier?
-What does the medium reverse or flip into when pushed to extremes?


Enhance means to improve, McLuahan was trying to show out what the medium give improvements to human? Society/ lifestyle? While there are enhancement, there will also be obsolesces, means something will be outdated, no longer necessary. Retrieve means to bring something back or to recover, retrieve experience or medium from the past; whereas Reverse means a complete change of direction or action, when pushes to extreme, it will occur opposite side effects.




For example:

The invention of smart phones as medium

ENHANCES
-            The communication within society, family, friends become easy, convenient
-           The convenient of wifi, can do research on the spot, download anything, chat
-           The functions of the apps in phones
  Internet, social media

OBSOLESCES
-            The culture of writing, letter
-            Scanner
-            Camera
-            Mp3 player

RETRIEVE
-           Bring back old rotary ring tones
-           Low fi games

REVERSE
-          Distraction
-          Not interactive within face to face
-          Not adventurous as every info is stored within the internet













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